News Release

RICHARDSON, Texas (Aug. 3, 2006) — Dr. Sheila Amin Gutiérrez de Piñeres has been appointed to the new position of associate provost for enrollment services at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD). Piñeres will lead the university’s efforts to recruit and admit talented undergraduate and graduate students as UTD continues to implement its “Creating the Future” strategic plan.

In making the appointment, UTD Provost Dr. Hobson Wildenthal noted, “Dr. Piñeres has an excellent background for assuming this important and challenging responsibility. She served as associate dean for undergraduate education within the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences and engineered an excellent recruiting strategy that nearly doubled the entering student population. Additionally, she is committed to UTD and to the enhancement of service to both prospective and enrolled students.”

Dr. Sheila Amin Gutiérrez de Piñeres

Piñeres will work with the staff of enrollment services, formerly known as admissions, to develop a unified communications plan for student recruitment and will oversee the implementation of Talisma, a constituent relations management tool that will enable UTD to interact more efficiently with prospective students. She will also work with the faculty and staff in the rollout of the new enterprise imaging system, which will allow faculty reviewers greater and immediate access to applicant files and improve the application review process.

According to Dr. Michael Coleman, UTD’s associate provost and undergraduate dean, “Dr. Piñeres’ membership on the university’s strategic enrollment management team revealed her commitment to a unified recruitment strategy and an increasingly diverse student population at UTD. She will provide strong and creative leadership in the re-engineering of strategies and processes within enrollment services.”

Piñeres is an associate professor of economics and political economy in UTD’s School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences. She received her undergraduate degree from Texas A&M University in 1988, a Master’s degree from the University of Chicago in 1989 and a Ph. D. degree in economics from Duke University in 1992.

Before joining UTD in 1996, Piñeres was an assistant professor of economics at The University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. She has authored and co-authored numerous articles about such topics as development economics, international economics and Latin America in numerous scholarly publications, including the Journal of Development Economics, the Bulletin of Latin American Research, Latin American Politics and Society, Applied Economics, Applied Economics Letters, the International Journal of Public Administration, Review of Development Economics, Latin American Business Review, Terrorism & Political Violence, Agricultural Economics and the Journal of International Consumer Marketing.

Piñeres is currently on the advisory board of The J. McDonald Williams Institute.

About UTD

The University of Texas at Dallas, located at the convergence of Richardson, Plano and Dallas in the heart of the complex of major multinational technology corporations known as the Telecom Corridor®, enrolls nearly 14,500 students. The school’s freshman class traditionally stands at the forefront of Texas state universities in terms of average SAT scores. The university offers a broad assortment of bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs. For additional information about UTD, please visit the university’s website at www.utdallas.edu.